CS 4/59995 - Multimedia Systems and Languages

 

 

Instructor: Arvind Bansal

Office: Room 214, MCS Building

Pre-requisite:  Data Structures (CS 33001), Undergraduate Structure of Programming Languages (currently CS 43101).

 

Motivation

 

Since 1998, the world and the industry is going through a multimedia revolution.  More  and more 3D interactive multimedia presentations are finding their way to web sites.  As the world is becoming more and more multimedia oriented, web is becoming  dynamic and multimedia oriented.  For example, news is becoming multimedia oriented, there are multiple newscast and music station which regularly send streaming multimedia and video clips.  This trend is increasing to an extend that individual corporate web-sites and internet based communication is becoming multimedia oriented.  In very near future, multimedia systems will play a major role in distributed learning too.  In future, more and more audiovisual content would be archived and sent to remote sites either through PDAs, cell phones, and mobile lap tops. 

 

There is a clear market demand for the students who understand theory, and can develop multimedia systems. There will be a continous growing demand of the programmers who can develop multimedia applications with optimum resource management in mind.  This course intends to prepare the students for such a growing demand by training them at the senior and entry level graduate student. 

 

Content

 

Introduction to multimedia (2 lectures),  Multimedia audio and video formats such as JPEG, MPEG, AVI etc. (2 lectures), Multimedia standards such as MPEG-4, MPEG-7 & and MPEG-21 ( 4 lectures)  ** 1st mid term **   XML language – syntax, programming, and parsing ( 2 lectures), Synchronization issues in multimedia languages (2 lectures), ),  SMIL 2.0 (Synchronized Multimedia Language) – syntax and programming (2 lectures), Streaming (1 lecture), Video and Sound editing (2 lectures) ** 2nd mid term **  Demand Driven multimedia and Buffer management (1 lecture),  Disc storage and archival for multimedia objects(1 lectures), Indexing and associative mechanism for image retrieval (2 lectures),  3D Modeling system (involves lab work VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) – syntax, programming with 3-D effects (2 lectures),    other recent systems such as X3D, DirectX, sound and video integration over the web (2 lectures),

Assignments

Assignment 1: Use of video and audio formats in Multimedia

Assignment 2: MPEG Standards

 

Assignment 3: An XML program

Assignment 4: Synchronization and SMIL programming

Assignment 5: Lab work involving Streaming, Video and Sound editing

 

Assignment 6: Demand driven multimedia, Media Storage and Indexing

Assignment 7 A multimedia presentation using VRML program

 

 

Group Project (three Students in the group)

 

A 3D web-site involving streaming using one of the authoring tools and/or the combination of any of the 3D

and synchronization language learned in the course.  The students can choose any 3D language of their choice

also with the permission of the instructor.  The project should be started after the tenth week to have a reasonable

presentation.  The presentation should be available for the all other students to see.   Copying from other websites

and plagiarism from the Website or any other source is strictly prohibited, and will result in serious penalty.

 

Reference Books (tentative)

 

1. Multimedia: Concepts and Practice, by Stephen McGloughlin, ISBN: 0130188301, November 2000,

    Prentice Hall

 

2. Multimedia Communication Systems, by K. Rammohanarao, Z. S. Bolzkovic, D. A. Milanovic, May 2002,

    Publisher: Prentice Hall; ISBN: 013031398X; 1st edition

 

3. The VRML 2.0 Handbook by  Jed Hartman, J. Wernecke, and R. Carey

     Publisher:  Addison-Wesley Pub Co, ISBN: 0201479443

 

4. 

 

3.      Slides and lectures notes to be provided by Dr. Arvind Bansal

 

Reference Web-sites

 

http://www.w3.org  -  W3 Standards Web site for XML standards and parsers, and SMIL

 

http://www.web3D.org – X3D standards web site

 

http://www.openworlds.com  -  Open Source for integrating C++ with VRML

 

http://fastscript3d.jpl.nasa.gov/  - Fastscript 3D – Javascript and java3D

 

More sites would be made available during the course

 

 

Grading

 

Six best of the seven assignments  would be counted.  Students doing all seven assignments satisfactorily would be given 3% extra bonus.  Group activity would be encouraged to understand the concept.  However, copying in any form would not be permitted as per the departmental policy.   

 

Assignment: 30%, First mid: 20%, Second Mid: 20%, Final: 20%, Project – 10%

 

Final Grade: A > 85% > B > 75 % > C > 60% > D > 50%